Contemporary situations arise where it is desirable to combine input content from a plurality of input sources into a single output content without distorting the input content, for example without adding temporal latency to the input content or influencing its pixel resolution. Moreover, many situations do not require the combined output data to be stored, whereas other situations require storage of the combined output data for replay purposes. Such storage is beneficially achieved whilst preserving original accuracy, for example resolution, for high quality playback purposes.
Contemporary installations often include a myriad of input devices and data collection devices, for example analog and/or digital cameras connected to surveillance arrangements such as video recording systems; such video recording systems optionally include digital video recorders (DVR), network video recorders (NVR), or personal video recorders (PVR). The contemporary installations are expensive and time consuming to construct for high quality surveillance purposes, because each source of input data is customarily connected to its own monitor, or several sources of input data are all collected together in a high-resolution manner in order to utilize a shared monitor, wherein a mosaic picture is created showing images from all of the sources of input data. Referring initially to FIG. 1, there is shown an illustration of a mosaic image generated by a vehicle park surveillance service setup, wherein the mosaic includes outputs from thirty three (33) sources of input data. Alternatively, situations arise where it is desirable to collect audio data from a plurality of audio sources generating high-quality audio data; in such a situation, it is often desirable to select amongst the audio sources for being monitored, or it is desired to sum audio content from the audio sources, for example condenser microphones spatially disposed amongst an orchestra, to generate an overall high-quality composite signal to be appreciated by a multitude of people, for example as in digital broadcast of an orchestral concert.
There is currently a lack of cost-effective contemporary systems that are operable to handle a plurality of high-quality data from corresponding input sources, and that are devoid of many devices for conditioning and conveying the high-quality data. Contemporary video conferencing systems and applications usually support various types of devices and sources of input data, and usually different conferencing systems are linked mutually to work together. Such video conferencing systems are capable of being configured in an enormous number of potential combinations, which creates a problem of implementing efficient communication within such systems. It is conventional practice to employ a mutually common communication protocol within the systems, although certain sources of input data are transcoded to a negotiated format, which can result in degradation of certain images communicated via the systems.
Mobile wireless communication devices, for example smart phones, tablet computers, phablet computers, lap-top computers, and wireless wrist-worn computers, are operable to generate, for example, content in a form of images, video, other photographic information, and audio data. Handling graphical content within such mobile devices consumes considerable power, which has implications for batteries employed to provide operating power to the mobile devices, for example when content is decoded and scaled to a desired size for presentation on pixel displays of the mobile devices. The aforesaid power consumption represents a problem when such mobile devices are operated in a configuration, for example for providing video conferencing-type services for a group of users.